The Dancing Baby. The Blair Witch. Mahir Cagri, the Turkish man
whose own personal Web fame got him a guest spot on The Late
Show with David Letterman. And let's not forget Deidre
LaCarte, the graphic-design student who put up a Web site full of
dancing hamsters as a lark-didn't even spell
"hamster" correctly-and will soon sell hamster mugs, key
chains and T-shirts, and was even featured in an Earthlink Internet
television commercial. A CD of hamster music is due soon, so you
know HampsterDance: The Movie can't be far behind.

Do you want in? Do you want the world to chat about your
company's Web site around water coolers and over e-mail? Do you
want to be invited to appear with David Letterman to tell a world
full of potential fans to log on to your Internet address,
Cheese-armpit~worm.com (having come to the Web a little late, your
first 17,246 domain-name choices were already taken)? In short, do
you want your business to become the next Internet phenomenon?

Entrepreneur: Steve Oedekerk

Impact: Thumb Wars went prime time on UPN last
May. Thumbtanic scored 15 million hits in 15 days, possibly
thanks to its featured spot on an Earthlink commercial

Today: While writing films like Ace Ventura, Pet
Detective and Patch Adams in his spare time, Oedekerk
continues to expand his "thumb-nation" technology. Future
projects include The Blair Thumb, Thumb Wrestling and
the pop musical, Thumbs.

Entrepreneur: Deidre LaCarte

Description: Rows of animated hamsters dancing to Roger
Miller's version of "Whistle Stop"

Impact: Appeared in a television commercial for
Earthlink. CD, video and merchandising deals are currently in the
works. Forty-five million hits since its inception.

Today: LaCarte made one crucial mistake: She didn't
rush to register the domain name www.hampsterdance.com; someone
else beat her to it after seeing her original GeoCities site.
LaCarte started HampsterDance2 after seeing the knockoffs of her
site, including LizardDance, CowDance and even the HamsterBlast, in
which visitors mow hamsters down. LaCarte is currently trying to
get control of the original HampsterDance.com domain name.

Entrepreneur: Joan Staffen

Description: A digital camera photographs the
JointSolutions conference room every two minutes. Kitty is
JointSolutions' adopted office cat, known mostly for napping on
the conference-room table or peering out the sliding glass
doors.

Impact: Although Kitty has no connection at all with
JointSolutions' high-tech client base, he has hit a nerve with
the public at large. Written about not only in pet magazines, but
also numerous newspapers worldwide, Kitty gets mail from around the
globe. One woman wrote that, in caring for her bedridden husband,
visiting Kitty is her only "window to the world." The
site has had almost 2.3 million hits to date.

Today: JointSolutions plans to sell Kitty office
accessories, including coffee mugs and, yes, mousepads. As with
other celebrities, Kitty's time in the spotlight has led to
some soul-searching-this month, the site starts featuring
letters from Kitty's own spiritual therapist.

Entrepreneur: Scott Dikkers and Peter K. Haise

Description: Satire of current events. Recent articles
include "450,000 Unsold Earth Day Issues of Time
Trucked To Landfill" and "Congress Wonders If It's
Even Making A Difference Anymore."

Impact: The Onion started as an underground Madison,
Wisconsin, publication. The Web opened it up to an international
audience. Covered in Entertainment Weekly, The New
Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, The Onion has grabbed 2.6
million visits per month.

Today: Bigger than ever, The Onion is going
multimedia. The Onion Radio News is heard by 9 million
people each week. Dikkers and Haise's two books have both made
The New York Times bestseller list. Next up: the big
screen-DreamWorks recently signed a deal to turn an
Onion article into a film.

Fancy Yourself A Phenomenon?

Entertain your audience. Sixty million-plus Web sites
are already out there; 100 million more are expected before the end
of the year. Let's say you have a prestigious investment firm.
Yawn. Making money is great, but Roth IRAs and savings bonds
aren't as zany as, say, that Web site with the dancing
hamsters. So splash some pictures of nude Sumo wrestlers all over
your firm's home page. I guarantee people will be talking about
your company.

Get the media to notice you. Hire a publicist, get a
guest spot on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or stand outside Sam
Donaldson's window and serenade him. Just get noticed. The one
thing all the aforementioned Web sites have in common is that
reporters wrote about them. Lots of reporters wrote about them. We
media types hate feeling left out. If USA Today writes about a Web
site, you'd better believe The Today Show will follow.

Enjoy your Web site, because the chances are great that
you will be the only one and why should you waste your life on
something no one else will see. Or, of course, it's entirely
possible that everybody will see it. "It's all
subjective," says Mike Corso, owner of Internet phenomenon; he
suggests you simply "build a Web site based on your passion,
your interests." Then let the magic begin.

Fad, Schmad

By Gisela M. Pedroza

Say you're willing to set your sights a bit lower-you
don't necessarily want to be a phenomenon; you'd settle for
just making some e-bucks. We asked executives at three of the most
popular how-to sites on the Web to verse us in the absolute basics
of making a little money on the Net.

Udai Shekawat, vice president of marketing and business
development, AskMe.com: "You need the ability to attract
large numbers of visitors to your site, pique their interest and
present a compelling case for buying your goods or
services."

Stephen P. Gott, president and CEO, Learn2.com: "The
key to sustained business success on the Internet is continuous
learning. As the world moves faster and competition becomes
steeper, knowledge becomes the differentiating factor between the
people at the head of the pack and the ones that are left
behind."